Amidst the rush of visitors in town, Osoyoos is equally flooded with ‘help wanted’ signs posted on windows of nearly every local business. The shortage of workers this year is evident as ever, and revealing the impact on those in industries like food and beverage.
Just last week, Osoyoos Dairy Queen (DQ) announced that their location will be temporarily closed for take-out and dine-in, with drive-through available, starting on Sunday, July 18.
Owner Caron Keens said that their location has a significant decrease in employees in comparison to a “normal summer.” Normally, DQ staffs approximately 22 people with a mix of full time and part-time workers. This year, they only have a mere 14 employees with most of them being youth working part time.
“We need to be responsible employers, and also be mindful of the wellness and mental health of our crew,” said Keens.
“We, like most people in the valley, are short staffed compared to previous years. So rather than continue to operate, and not be able to sustain the level of service, it just has to be responsible and try to mitigate any problems, staff burnout, or potentially the staff that we do have leaving. It’s a solution based decision.”
They’ve tried to reduce hours (like many other businesses in town) but ultimately felt like taking the step to close dine-in and take-out completely was the wisest decision.
“People are already tapped out, and it’s not unique to us. I feel that we are being transparent and vulnerable, we represent a lot of other businesses. And it’s not just food and beverage,” said Keens.
Lake Village Bakery, dealing with many of the same issues, decided back in June to completely close on Sundays.
Bakery owner Meagan Young-Bibby said that when they put out applications for seasonal hires this year, they didn’t get very many applicants at all.
“So we kind of realized early on, much like many other places, that this might be a little bit of a struggle,” said Young-Bibby.
Normally, the bakery would produce approximately 240 loaves of bread a day by hand and upwards of 150 cinnamon buns as well. Now, due to staff shortages, they are down to making 130 loaves of bread and 60-80 cinnamon buns a day.
Though in the winter, the flow of traffic in the bakery is more tame, by summer, there’s a line out the front door half an hour before the shop even opens. Sundays started to get “unmanageable” as early as Easter, said Young-Bibby.
They went through the process of cutting hours for some of their staff and then eventually Young-Bibby and her husband Ian were working at the bakery by themselves on Sundays, racking up a seven day work week.
And so came the difficult decision to just close the bakery on Sundays, out of necessity.
“By taking Sundays off, now we can just spend time being people to take a little bit of a break from the bakery without making anyone else do more than they’re comfortable or willing to do,” said Young-Bibby.
“Our staff are fantastic, we absolutely adore them. And it’s important that they feel appreciated more than just verbally.”
Many other establishments in the area have also made changes to their business. Wildfire Grill on Main Street, Osoyoos, had to cancel their Friday night live music on the patio due to staff shortage. Watermark Resort’s restaurant 15 Park Bistro changed their hours to be closed now on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Other businesses have had to power through and find alternate methods of dealing with the labour shortage.
Jeff Van Geest, chef at Miradoro at Tinhorn Creek, said when they reopened their restaurant this spring, they received zero resumes.
“Here we are, already been through six months of really throttled business numbers. So, you know, we want to open up and do the business and make up for lost time, and then at the same time we don’t have to staff and pull it off,” said Van Geest.
At the moment, though still understaffed, the team at Miradoro is doing better, according to Van Geest. He explained that he had to work out creative ways to manage the problems, including hiring people with very little experience but showed passion and work ethic.
“I think there’s been a bit of a reckoning; I think people are taking a look at it and seeing the hours and hard work, and not really seeing the reward anymore in what we do.”
“I mean I still love it, I love what I do but I think a lot of people are taking a step back and reconsidering what their career path is, and we lost a lot of really good people unfortunately,” said Van Geest.
He added that this is a reality happening not just in the Okanagan but across the country.
According to a Statistics Canada report on COVID-19’s impact of the food and beverage industry, by May 2020, employment in the industry saw a steep drop of 55 per cent compared to pre-pandemic employment in February 2020 and remained 29 per cent (one-third) lower in December.
Additionally, a significant number of establishments faced a 40 per cent or more decline in revenue in 2020 compared with 2019.
“The industry has experienced constant challenges, exacerbated by the need to adapt in light of repeated re-openings and shutdowns as a result of fluctuations in the number of COVID-19 cases across the country,” states the report.
The influx of people coming to the Okanagan for their vacation is great, said Keens, “but a lot of people working in the service industry haven’t had a break. it’s just been one thing after another with COVID last year…and now we’re dealing with another crisis.”
